Manulife Profit Jumps 45 Percent

14 May Manulife Profit Jumps 45 Percent

Manulife Financial Corp is a well-known insurance company, mostly known for their life insurance policies. Manulife has always been a mogul in the insurance industry as they offer a variety of packages for individuals and professionals in all industries. They acquired a 45% boost in their profits during their first quarter, a sign that Asia sales have been better than ever before. With this dramatic increase in profits, the company wants to consider looking for brand new partners in Asia over the coming years.

With the help of their partnership with DBC in Singapore and in Hong Kong, the Asian unit for Manulife increased their sales by 14% alone. This accumulated C$954 million for the company, helping to level out their lackluster gains from investments over the past year.

According to Steve Roder, the Chief Financial Office for Manulife, their growth in Asian markets is quite substantial, mostly as a result of their bancassurance agreement with DBS. Since this partnership brought an ample amount of success to the company, they intend on trying to find other partnerships in the same way.

As a part of their 15-year partnership, Manulife has agreed to give $1.2 billion to DBS Group Holdings as of last April. This gives the company the ability to sell their insurance products through different networks in Asia, referred to as the bancassurance program.

The main reason as to why Manulife has such a large impact in Asian communities is because of the quality of life in these areas. With more middle class families, they are more open to signing up for different types of insurance that are going to protect themselves and their families. Instead of working with lower class customers that might not have enough funds to put towards premiums and different insurance products that they could need. The more middle class residents there are, the more successful their sales tactics will be and Asia is booming with middle class citizens.

In Singapore alone, sales are over 500% stronger than they’ve ever been. Japan also saw an ample amount of growth as well as the Philippines and Vietnam. This leads to a total of 70% of the company’s premiums being purchased out of Asia, a market that the company continues to venture further into. In fact, Manulife has a strong presence in relatively every Asian country aside from India and South Korea, though they don’t have the need to enter these markets just yet.

The main problem that Manulife has is in relation to their investments, particularly in the oil sector. The company found it incredibly difficult to reach their margin of C$4 billion in 2016, simply because the price of oil plummeted drastically. Though the Chief Financial Officer for Manulife has assured their customers that although the price of assets being sold and traded doesn’t mean that it’s going to be that way forever. They strongly believe that the worst is in the past and the price of oil is only going to get better over the coming months.